Bluewing (14 page)

~

The red-haired woman who I’d mistaken for Claire earlier returned with a pitcher of drink and a platter of charred meat. She set the food before us and started to leave.

“How can we eat with our hands bound?” Gabe demanded.

I looked at him sharply. Was he planning something?

The woman paused and tipped her head to one side, glancing him over as if trying to determine how likely he would be to escape. Gabe looked back, his expression blank.

“I will untie your hands,” she said. “But only so you can eat. Then, they will be rebound, do you understand?”

Gabe nodded. She crossed the room again and knelt before us. Her cold fingers brushed against mine as she undid my ropes, and I wiggled my hands and stretched my arms to get the blood flowing again as soon as I was free. A dark stain had seeped through the bandage on my arm.

The woman freed Gabe’s hands and stepped back. A knife glittered at her belt in the firelight as she moved.

“Eat,” she said, fingering it.

We reached for the meat. Hunger was suddenly tearing its claws into the walls of my stomach, and I chewed with savage enthusiasm.

Gabe ate slower. His eyes darted around the room, resting on various objects, lingering on the doorway. He leaned close to me and spoke in a whisper. “We need to make our move now. We’re nearly alone, we’re untied...”

“No,” I said. “I want to talk to Stone again.”

“Lia—”

“Eat,” the woman commanded, and he bit into his food.

I reached for the bread and tore off a piece.

Gabe dropped his bread between his feet and muttered a curse. He hunched over to retrieve it. “My hands are clumsy from this cold,” he said, looking at the woman as if it were all her fault.

She sniffed in derision.

When we’d finished the bread, she approached us to retie our bonds.

“Wait,” Gabe said. “I need another drink.”

The woman offered him the pitcher. But instead of taking it, he hurled the liquid into her face. She staggered back with a howl of pain as the hot drink splashed in her eyes. Gabe leaped to his feet.

“Come on, Lia!”

He’d undone the ropes around his ankles when he’d pretended to drop his bread.

“Gabe—”

Footsteps pounded outside. My feet were still bound. I looked from the ropes to his face.

Gabe stepped back. “I’ll tell the others. We’ll come for you.”

And then he ducked through the tent flap and he was gone.

CHAOS FILLED THE tent in Gabe’s wake as people rushed inside armed with spears and knives. Hands grabbed me. The woman with the burned face shouted and pointed. Blisters covered her cheeks, and the front of her garment was wet. She glared at me as someone bound my hands again.

Stone appeared, yanked me to my feet, and dragged me outside. Cold wind whipped my face and swirled beneath my cloak, chilling me. The torches cast golden circles around us, and snow was falling, a gentle swath of white amid the confusion. My ankles were still tied, and I stumbled a few feet before he bent and picked me up.

Armed men spilled past us, heading for the open darkness beyond the tents. I didn’t see Gabe anywhere. A strangled feeling filled me, threatening to choke me. What would they do when they caught him?

Stone carried me to another tent, a smaller one with no one inside it. He dumped me down on a pad of furs and paced to the doorway. “Stay there,” he ordered.

I struggled up into a sitting position. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Stone just shook his head.

I fell back. The room spun, and nausea crawled in my throat again, but I didn’t vomit. I lay still, staring at the top of the tent and watching the way the shadows of the people running outside danced across it.

“Stone,” I said aloud.

He looked at me but didn’t speak. His face was a riot of anger.

“You have to let me go. Gabe will get away, and he will find my people. They’ll come for me. They’ll fight you. Do you want that?” My heart beat fast as I spoke. My threats were a gamble, but what other choice did I have?

“No,” he said. “But if we catch him, they won’t know where you are, so it won’t matter.”

“They’ll look for us. They’ll find us.” But I wasn’t sure if that was true—the finding part, anyway.

Stone didn’t reply.

I was still, waiting for sounds of Gabe’s capture, waiting for my hopes to fall. But they didn’t come. Silence filled the air. I counted seconds, minutes. Time slipped by in little eternities. My breathing slowed. My eyes grew heavy with the exhaustion that followed panic.

Footsteps crunched in the snow, and a shadow painted the side of the tent in lines of gray. “He escaped across the boundary,” a voice reported. “We did not chase him beyond it.”

Stone swore and turned to look at me. I lifted an eyebrow.

He sighed. “Speak your piece, then.”

“My people have supplies,” I said. “Things you could use in exchange for our shared use of the greenhouse. We have knowledge of the Frost—the place you call the Compound. We have knowledge of the Mechs. If you make a peace agreement with us, we can share these things with you. If you do not, we might have to fight you to ensure our survival. Do you really want that?”

He was listening.

“Please,” I said.

“I will speak with the others in the morning.”

~

At first light, the leaders deliberated. I waited outside the largest tent in the circle, huddled on a stool covered in fur, bundled in my cloak as I strained to make out the low murmurs inside. A young man with long red hair and a scraggly beard waited with me, unmoving and unspeaking. The wind blew my hair into my eyes. I tasted thawing snow on the air.

The world around me looked different by the pale light of morning—sadder and less vicious. The ice statues dripped in the sunlight. Fire pits smoldered, releasing curls of gray smoke toward the sky. The tents seemed small and ragged, huddled against the cold like shivering children.

“What are those statues for?” I asked my guard.

He looked at me, his eyes flat and cold, and for a moment I thought he would refuse to reply, but then he said, “They are carved to remember our dead. We etch them fresh from the ice at every campsite, one for each family who Wanders.”

I ran my gaze over the people—children playing with small stones in the snow, men and women working at tanning racks or tending fires. Everyone wore simple, thick clothing made of animal skins. Both men and women wore trousers. Their long hair—which came in shades of red, brown, and black—was bound back in tails with strips of cloth that hung down their backs. Tired eyes and unsmiling mouths regarded me with open suspicion. Accounts of hard work were scribbled across their sun-chapped faces, and sorrow was etched deep in every line on their brows.

The Frost was not the only harsh place in our world, it seemed.

Finally, the murmur of voices ceased, and Stone emerged from the tent. He dismissed my guard and reached down to unbind my hands. “They have agreed that you can go,” he said, without any preamble.

“And the greenhouse?”

“They have also agreed that your people may share a portion of it, in exchange for the information and supplies you mentioned. I will meet you at the greenhouse for these exchanges. I will come for them in two weeks’ time. Do not even think of cheating us in this bargain. We are not to be trifled with.”

Stone gave me directions back to the greenhouse and a canteen of fire-warmed water to carry with me. We said no goodbyes. I turned and headed across the white wasteland, following our line of footprints from the night before back across the boundary line and into the Frost.

~

I moved slowly because of my weakness from being bled, reaching the mansion ruins by midmorning. I climbed the crumbling steps to the great house. When I slipped inside, the echo of frantic voices emanated from one of the rooms off the kitchen.

“Well, we have to do something!”

I recognized the voice as Gabe’s. Relief shivered through me. He’d made it back, then. No Watchers had gotten him. He hadn’t lost his way.

“Of course we’re going to do something, don’t be insane. I won’t leave my sister to be bled out like a slaughtered animal at the hands of—” Jonn broke off as his voice cracked. “I’m only saying that we have to be smart about it. We don’t have the numbers or the weapons to rush in and fight them. I need to contact the Blackcoats. Maybe they can help us.” He fell silent, and I heard the scrape of feet and the creak of crutches. He was pacing.

I moved down the passage toward the sound of their voices.

“Do you think she’s all right?” I heard my brother ask, and he sounded utterly broken.

“She’s strong,” Gabe said. “She’s a fighter.”

“She’d better not do anything stupid in the name of bravery.”

“When have I ever done any such thing, Jonn Weaver?” I demanded, appearing in the doorway.

They both whirled in astonishment.

“Lia!” Gabe crossed the room in three strides and pulled me into a bear hug.

Over his shoulder, I saw Jonn sag against his crutch. His eyes fluttered with relief, and he flashed me a sheepish smile. “You weren’t supposed to hear that, but I am glad you were here to do so. Are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” I said, the words a sigh. “I’m here and in one piece.”

Gabe released me and pulled away to look at my face. “What happened? How did you escape?”

“I didn’t escape. After you left me, I made a bargain with them.”

“Left you,” Gabe repeated, catching a whiff of my anger.

“A...bargain?” Jonn’s expression turned apprehensive.

“Don’t look so worried, brother. I’ve negotiated our use of the greenhouse and I may have made some new allies.”

I explained the deal I’d made with Stone. Gabe scowled, but Jonn looked thoughtful.

“This may be difficult, but it might come in handy. Good work, sister. You’re becoming a diplomat. Ivy won’t believe it.”

Ivy
. Thinking of my sister made my stomach twist. “Has there been any word from her, or anyone else in the village?”

“No one has made the journey back to Echlos to check,” Jonn said.

“I’ll go.” At the moment, I was angry with Gabe and I needed to sort it out. Walking was the best way to think these days.

“You need to rest,” he argued. “You look ready to drop.”

“I’ll eat something, and then I’m going.”

“Lia...”

He looked so worried that I recanted. “Tomorrow, then. But I want to be the one to go.”

I turned and left the room. I wanted my cot and a warm blanket and nothing else for as long as possible.

“Lia.” Gabe caught up with me and snagged my arm, whirling me around to face him. “I...please talk to me.”

“What is there to say? You decided to run, I didn’t. You left me there alone.”

“You’re angry.”

The corners of my mouth turned down. I didn’t know how to quantify how I felt. His move had made sense, and I understood it logically...so why did I feel so betrayed?

I pressed a hand over my eyes. “I need to sleep. We can talk about it more later.”

He let me go.

~

Late afternoon had painted the forest golden and purple by the time I reached Echlos the next day. I crossed the plain toward the familiar white rounded roofs, smooth as eggshells against a cloudless blue sky. I would leave another note explaining that if we received no new word in a few days, I would sneak into the village and knock on Ivy’s door myself. We needed to make contact with the Blackcoat leaders again, and I needed to make sure my sister was safe.

A shadow flickered at the edge of my periphery, snagging my attention. I stopped just inside the entrance to Echlos. A skitter ran down my spine as my senses prickled with awareness.

Someone was here.

Ivy?

I couldn’t be sure, so I stepped back and pressed myself against the wall, waiting for the other person to make the first move. My heart pounded even though the likelihood that it was a solider was almost nonexistent.

“Hello?”

The voice echoed, a hesitant whisper in the silence. I sighed. Jullia.

I stepped away from the wall to meet her. “It’s Lia Weaver.”

She was at the end of the hall, near the steps that led down to our former dwelling place. She turned at my words and hurried toward me.

“Oh, Lia. I thought... I couldn’t find any of you...”

“I left a note,” I said.

“Yes, I found it, but...” she broke off and moved her hands in a helpless gesture. I noticed her eyes were red-rimmed and her face was the color of ash.

“Are you ill?”

She laughed, a hysterical sound. “I’m fine. It’s...it’s Ivy.”

The mention of my sister’s name pierced me. I went still. “What happened to Ivy?”

Was it Watchers?

Jullia covered her face with her hands and sucked in a deep breath. Her shoulders rose and fell.

“She’s been arrested.”

“ARRESTED?” I HISSED, sure I must have heard her wrong.

Jullia nodded.

I sagged back against the wall, my whole body turning numb as I absorbed the news.

“She was trying to sneak out to see you,” Jullia said. “We never were able to get any proper passes to leave, you see, so she went through the secret way in the wall. The soldiers found her when she was halfway through the forest. They were on one of their patrols. They brought her in, and locked her in a cell.” She sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “What will we do?”

Certainty steeled me. It made me resolute and deadly calm.

“We’re going to rescue her,” I said.

~

We moved under cover of darkness, a party that included Gabe, Juniper, and me. We wore black scarves over our faces. We didn’t speak as we crossed the forest and fields of the Frost, heading for the village.

The plan was simple: get in, get Ivy, get out. One of the Blackcoats would be waiting to meet us just inside the walls, and he or she would give us more information. We would proceed from there.